[wallinbl]

http://money.cnn.com/2005/10/27/news...ex.htm?cnn=yes

They set a record for the highest profit in any quarter in US history. Prices for gas run through the roof supposedly because of the hurricanes and Exxon uses the opportunity to bend everyone over and rake in more money. Screw them. I hope someone finds some legal shenanigans to punish them with.

[TETENAL]

They are a business, not a charity. They can charge as much as people are willing to pay. If you don't like it shop elsewhere or get a Fiat Punto.

[MacNStein]

Fine, don't buy gas at Exxon. I don't. I buy gas from a smaller local company and I always pay less, sometimes much less.

[wallinbl]

Originally Posted by TETENAL

If you don't like it shop elsewhere

They all did it. It's not like Exxon would sell gas if they were the only company with high prices.

[screamingFit]

There's so much more to be pissed off at Exxon about than how much they charge you for gas.

[Doofy]

* Note to self: Remember to buy shares in Exxon.

[OreoCookie]

Welcome to the unpleasant side of capitalism. Either buy a smaller car, drive less or be willing to pay more. I don't see any alternatives. Price gauging is nothing new in this industry (heck, it even thrives on it, guess what OPEC is ).

[wallinbl]

Originally Posted by OreoCookie

Either buy a smaller car, drive less

Done and done. I drive a small 4 cylinder car and I recently moved closer to work, kids' school, etc.


Look, I realize that companies are out there to make money. The problem is that they told us gas prices were up because of the hurricanes. Gas prices were up because they were greedy. Make money, but don't lie to us.

[smacintush]

If any of you were to find yourself raking in money due to circumstances surrounding your business or job, you would be happy to take it and do what you wish with it.

[PBG4 User]

Gas prices are up worldwide. Exxon (and the other oil companies) sell to a worldwide market. You wanna lower the price of oil (and therefore gas)? Tell China to stop buying up so much oil.

The fact is, most oil companies make their huge profits because the price of futures are driven up in the open market. The futures market locks in the oil companies' sell price and since their cost to pump it out of the ground doesn't go up at anywhere near the same rate, their profit increases. At this point oil price is 1 part demand and 1 part psychology. It would take the US as an entire nation to change the demand part of this quotient, and some good political & weather news to change the psychological part of the formula.

[Fyre4ce]

Originally Posted by TETENAL

They are a business, not a charity. They can charge as much as people are willing to pay. If you don't like it shop elsewhere or get a Fiat Punto.

This is only true if they have a monopoly. If they are really selling petroleum for a lot more than it costs them to produce it (even if consumers are willing to pay the high price), a competitor should be able to under-cut their price, still make a decent profit per unit, and steal all their business. The market will eventually settle to an equilibrium. In fact, in a perfectly competitive market, every firm has zero profit (but this is an idealization). This is why competition is a good thing for consumers.

If multiple competitors get together and conspire to all raise their prices, that's price fixing, which is illegal.

[Doofy]

Just a bit of something which may have an effect:

Oil companies have fixed costs in their infrastructure. They have to cover these costs.
If sales volume is down (as in the case of everyone going out and buying small cars), sales prices must go up.

Therefore, go buy a Hummer to ensure that sales prices are kept low.

[OreoCookie]

Originally Posted by wallinbl

Done and done. I drive a small 4 cylinder car and I recently moved closer to work, kids' school, etc.

Look, I realize that companies are out there to make money. The problem is that they told us gas prices were up because of the hurricanes. Gas prices were up because they were greedy. Make money, but don't lie to us.

Do you believe everything `they' say?

[Mastrap]

Originally Posted by Doofy

Oil companies have fixed costs in their infrastructure. They have to cover these costs.
If sales volume is down (as in the case of everyone going out and buying small cars), sales prices must go up.

The price of the infrastructure only a tiny percentage of the overall fixed cost.

[allblue]

At the risk of getting my ass burned - with respect this forum doesn't appear to have a very sophisticated understanding of big political issues (why would it?) the role of the oil corporations in shaping global politics is extraordinarily profound. Every major war of the 20c had oil as its underlying cause - from the colonial grab of the middle eastern oilfields following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire brought about by WW1 to the Unocal plipeline deal in Afghanistan in 2002 it has been Big Oil that has pulled the strings. Iraq is a little more complex, and for a glimpse of the real stuff that goes on underneath the infantile rhetoric about 'freedom' and 'democracy' this article by Greg Palast highlights the vested interests in maintaining the OPEC cartel.

OPEC AND THE ECONOMIC CONQUEST OF IRAQ
Why Iraq Still sells its oil à la cartel
Twilight of the neocon gods

TWO AND A HALF YEARS AND $202 BILLION into the war in Iraq, the United
States has at least one significant new asset to show for it: effective
membership, through our control of Iraq's energy policy, in the
Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), the Arab-dominated
oil cartel.


Just what to do with this proxy power has been, almost since President
Bush's first inaugural, the cause of a pitched battle between
neoconservatives at the Pentagon, on the one hand, and the State Department and
the oil industry, on the other. At issue is whether Iraq will remain a
member in good standing of OPEC, upholding production limits and
thereby high prices, or a mutinous spoiler that could topple the Arab
oligopoly.


According to insiders and to documents obtained from the State
Department, the neocons, once in command, are now in full retreat. Iraq's
system of oil production, after a year of failed free-market
experimentation, is being re-created almost entirely on the lines originally laid out
by Saddam Hussein.


Under the quiet direction of U.S. oil company executives working with
the State Department, the Iraqis have discarded the neocon vision of a
laissez faire, privatized oil operation in favor of one shackled to
quotas set by OPEC, which have been key to the 148% rise in oil prices
since the beginning of 2002. This rise is estimated to have cost the U.S.
economy 1.5% of its GDP, or a third of its total growth during the
period.


Given this economic blow, and given that OPEC states account for 46% of
America's oil imports, it may seem odd that the United States'
"remaking" of Iraq would allow for a national oil company that props up OPEC's
price gouging. And in fact the original scheme for reconstruction, at
least the one favored by neoconservatives, was to privatize Iraq's oil
entirely and thereby undermine the oil cartel. One intellectual
godfather of this strategy was Ariel Cohen of the Heritage Foundation, who in
September 2002 published (with Gerald P. O'Driscoll, Jr.) a
post-invasion plan, "The Road to Economic Prosperity for a Post-Saddam Iraq," that
put forward the idea of using Iraq to smash OPEC. Cohen explained to me
how such an extraordinary geopolitical feat might be accomplished. OPEC
maintains high oil prices by suppressing production through a quota
system effectively imposed on each member by Saudi Arabia, which reigns by
dint of its overwhelming reserves. The Saudis, to maintain their
control on pricing, must keep a lid on production from other
members-particularly Iraq, which has the second greatest proven reserves.


Under Saddam Hussein, Iraq adhered to the OPEC quota limit
(historically set to equal Iran's, now 3.96 million barrels a day) via state
ownership of all fields. Cohen reasoned that if Iraq's fields were broken up
and sold off, a dozen competing operators would quickly crank up
production from their individual patches to the maximum possible, swiftly
raising Iraq's total output to 6 million barrels a day. This extra crude
would flood world petroleum markets, OPEC would devolve into mass
cheating and overproduction, oil prices would fall over a cliff, and Saudi
Arabia-both economically and politically - would fall to its knees.


By February 2003, Cohen's position had been enshrined as official
policy, in the form of a hundred-page blueprint for the occupied nation
titled, "Moving the Iraqi Economy from Recovery to Sustainable Growth"-a
plan that generally embodied the principles for postwar Iraq favored by
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and
the Iran-Contra figure Elliott Abrams, now Deputy National Security
Adviser. Nominally written by a committee of Defense, State, and Treasury
officials, the blueprint was in fact the brainchild of a platoon of
corporate lobbyists, chief among them the flattax fanatic Grover Norquist.
From overhauling tax rates to rewriting copyright law, the document
mapped out a radical makeover of Iraq as a free-market Xanadu-a sort of
Chile on the Tigris-including, on page 73, the sell-off of the nation's
crown jewels: "privatization... [of] the oil and supporting industries."


Following the U.S. military's swift advance to Baghdad, those skeptical
of the neocon plan were summarily brushed aside. Chief among the
castoffs was General Jay Garner, the shortlived occupation viceroy who on the
very night he arrived in Baghdad from Kuwait received a call from
Rumsfeld informing him of his dismissal. When I met with Garner last March
at the Washington offices of L3 Corporation's giant security subsidiary
he now heads, the general told me that he had resisted imposing on
Iraqis the plan's sell-off of assets, especially the oil. "That's just one
fight you don't have to take on right now," he said. "You don't want to
end the day with more enemies than you started with."


In plotting the destruction of OPEC, the neocons failed to predict the
virulent resistance of insurgent forces: the U.S. oil industry itself.
From the outset of the planning for war, U.S. oil executives had thrown
in their lot with the pragmatists at the State Department and the
National Security Council. Within weeks of the first inaugural, prominent
Iraqi expatriates-many with ties to U.S. industry-were invited to secret
discussions directed by Pamela Quanrud, an NSC economics expert now
employed at State. "It quickly became an oil group," one participant,
Falah Aljibury, told me. Aljibury, an adviser to Amerada Hess's oil trading
arm and to investment banking giant Goldman Sachs, who once served as a
back channel between the United States and Iraq during the Reagan and
George H. W. Bush administrations, cut ties to the Hussein regime
following the invasion of Kuwait.


The working group's ideas about the war had been far less starry-eyed
than those of the neocons. "The petroleum industry, the chemical
industry, the banking industry-they'd hoped that Iraq would go for a
revolution like in the past and government was shut down for two or three days,"
Aljibury told me. "You have a martial law . . . and say Iraq is being
liberated and everybody stay where they are . . . Everything as is." On
this plan, Hussein would simply have been replaced by some former
Baathist general. One candidate was General Nizar Khazraji, Saddam's former
army chief of staff, who at the time was under house arrest in Denmark
pending charges for war crimes. (Khazraji was seen in Iraq a month
after the U.S. invasion, but he soon disappeared and has not been heard
from since.)


Roughly six months before the invasion, the Bush Administration
designated Philip Carroll to advise the Iraqi Oil Ministry once U.S. tanks
entered Baghdad. Carroll had been CEO of both Fluor Corporation, now a
major contractor in Iraq, and, earlier, of Royal Dutch/Shell's U.S.
division. In May 2003, a month after his arrival in Iraq, Carroll made
headlines when he told the Washington Post that Iraq might break with OPEC:
"[Iraqis] have from time to time, because of compelling national
interest, elected to opt out of the quota system and pursue their own path. .
. . They may elect to do that same thing. To me, it's a very important
national question." Carroll later told me, though, that he personally
would not have been supportive of privatizing oil fields. "Nobody in
their right mind would have thought of doing that," he said.


Soon after Carroll resigned his post in September 2003, the new
provisional government appointed an oil minister, Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum. Uloum
(who had been maneuvered into the job by then-neocon favorite Ahmad
Chalabi) quickly fired Muhammad al-Jiburi, chief of Iraq's State Oil
Marketing Organization, and Thamer Ghadhban, the expert in charge of the
southern oil fields, both of whom had been trusted by the Western oil
industry. Production faltered from a combination of incompetence, wholesale
theft (Iraq's oil was unmetered), sabotage, and corruption that one
oilman told me was "rampant," with "direct payoffs to government officials
by commercial operators."


With pipelines exploding daily, the fantasy of remaking Iraq's oil
industry also went up in flames. Carroll was replaced by another Houston
oil chieftain, Rob McKee, a former executive vice-president of
ConocoPhillips and currently the chairman-even during his tenure in Baghdad-of
Enventure, an oil-drilling supply subsidiary of the Halliburton
Corporation. McKee had little tolerance for the neocons' threat to privatize the
oil fields. A close associate of McKee's and the executive adviser to
Hess's trading arm, Ed Morse, told me that "Rob was very promotive of
putting in place a really strong national oil company," even if he had to
act over the objections of the Iraqi Governing Council. Morse, who says
he takes as many as six calls a day from the Bush Administration
regarding Iraq, is one of the men to whom Washington turns to obtain the
views of Big Oil. Like Carroll and McKee, Morse sneers at what he calls
"the obsession of neo-conservative writers on ways to undermine OPEC."
Iraqis, says Morse, know that if they pump 6 million barrels a day, i.e.,
2 million above their expected OPEC quota, "they will crash the oil
market" and bring down their own economy.


In November 2003, McKee quietly ordered up a new plan for Iraq's oil.
The drafting would be overseen by a "senior adviser," Amy Jaffe, who had
worked for Morse when he held the formidable title of Chairman of the
Council on Foreign Relations-James Baker III Institute Joint Committee
on Petroleum Security. Jaffe now works for Baker, the former Secretary
of State, whose law firm serves as counsel to both ExxonMobil and the
defense minister of Saudi Arabia. The plan, nominally written by State
Department contractor BearingPoint, was guided, says Jaffe, by a handful
of oil industry consultants and executives.

For months, the State Department officially denied the existence of
this 323-page plan for Iraq's oil, but when I identified the document's
title from my sources and threatened legal action, I was able to obtain
the complete report, dated December 2003 and entitled "Options for
Developing a Long Term Sustainable Iraqi Oil Industry." The multi-volume
document describes seven possible models of oil production for Iraq, each
one merely a different flavor of a single option: the creation of a
state-owned oil company. The seven options ranged from the Saudi Aramco
model, in which the government owns the whole operation from reserves to
pipelines, to the Azerbaijan model, in which the state-owned assets are
operated almost entirely by "IOCs" (International Oil Companies). The
drafters had little regard for the "self-financing" system, such as
Saudi Arabia's, which bars IOCs from the fields; they prefer the
production-sharing agreement (PSA) model, under which the state maintains
official title to the reserves but operation and control are given to foreign
oil companies. These companies then manage, fund, and equip crude
extraction in exchange for a percentage of sales receipts.


While promoting IOC control of the fields, the authors take care to
warn the Iraqi government against attempting to squeeze IOC profits:
"Countries that do not offer risk-adjusted rates of return equal to or above
other nations will be unlikely to achieve significant levels of
investment, regardless of the richness of their geology." Indeed, to outbid
other nations for Big Oil's favor will require Iraq to turn over quite a
large share of profits, especially when competing against countries
such as Azerbaijan that have given away the store. The Azeri government,
notes the report, has "been able to partially overcome their risk
profile and attract billions of dollars of investment by offering a
contractual balance of commercial interests within the risk contract." This
refers to the fact that Azerbaijan, despite its poor oil quality and poor
location, drew in the IOCs via scandalous splits of revenue allowed by
the nation's corrupt government.


Given how easily the interests of OPEC and those of the IOCs can be
aligned, it is certainly understandable why smashing the oil cartel would
not strike oilmen as a good idea. In 2004, with oil approaching the
$50-a-barrel mark all year, the major U.S. oil companies posted record or
near record profits. ConocoPhillips, Rob McKee's company, this February
reported a doubling of its quarterly profits from the previous year,
which itself had been a company record; Carroll's former employer, Shell,
posted a record-breaking $4.48 billion in fourth-quarter earnings.
ExxonMobil last year reported the largest one-year operating profit of any
corporation in U.S. history.


When I talked to Ariel Cohen at Heritage, his dream of smashing OPEC in
shambles, he blamed the State Department for acquiescing to the Saudis
and to Russia, which also benefit s from selling oil at high OPEC
prices. The poisonous policies were influenced, he said, by "Arab economists
hired by the State Department who are basically supporting the witches'
brew of the Saudi royal family and the Soviet ostblock . . . because
the Saudis are interested in maximizing their market share and they're
not interested in fast growth of the Iraqi output."


According to Morse, the switch to an OPEC-friendly policy for Iraq was
driven by Dick Cheney himself. "The person who is most influential in
running American energy policy is the Vice President," who, says Morse,
"thinks that security begins by . . . letting prices follow wherever
they may."


Even, I asked, if those are artificially high prices, set by OPEC? "The
VP's office [has] not pursued a policy in Iraq that would lead to a
rapid opening of the Iraqi energy sector . . . so they have not done
anything, either with producers or energy policy, that would put us on a
track to say, 'We're going to put a squeeze on OPEC.'"


Opposition to OPEC was handled in a style that would have made Saddam
proud. On May 20, 2004, Iraqi police raided Ahmad Chalabi's home in
Baghdad and carted away his computers and files. Chalabi was hunted by his
own government: the charge was espionage, no less, for Iran. Chalabi's
Governing Council was soon shut down and, crucially, Bahr al-Uloum was
yanked from the Oil Ministry and replaced by the very men he had
removed: Thamer Ghadhban, who took al-Uloum's job at the oil ministry and
Chalabi rival Muhammad al-Jiburi who was made minister of trade.


But just when you thought the fat lady sang for the neo-cons, who
should rise from his crypt eight months later but Ahmad Chalabi. In January
2005, Chalabi cut a deal with his former oil minister's father, a Shia
power broker, and rode that religious ethnic vote back into office.
Chalabi landed himself the post of Second Deputy Prime Minister and, in
addition, the tantalizing title of interim oil minister. The espionage
investigation was dropped; the King of Jordan offered to pardon Chalabi
for the $72 million missing from Chalabi's former bank; and Chalabi once
again turned over his oil ministry to Sheik al-Uloum's son. The Texans'
OPEC man Ghadhban, was again kicked downstairs.


But Chalabi had learned his lesson: don't mess with Texas, or the
Texan's favorite cartel. A chastened Chalabi now endorses Iraq's cooperation
with OPEC's fleecing of the planet's oil consumers.


And Dick Cheney, far from "putting the squeeze on OPEC," has taken his
de facto seat there, assenting by silence to the oil monopoly's
piratical price gouging. But hasn't OPEC's stratospheric crude prices choked
the life out of America's auto industry and bankrupted half a dozen
airlines? In the Vice-President's bunker the elimination of jobs of
Democratic-leaning union members is likely seen as a bonus for the good deed
of boosting oil industry profits far above the ozone layer.

[medicineman]

Originally Posted by wallinbl

http://money.cnn.com/2005/10/27/news...ex.htm?cnn=yes

They set a record for the highest profit in any quarter in US history. Prices for gas run through the roof supposedly because of the hurricanes and Exxon uses the opportunity to bend everyone over and rake in more money. Screw them. I hope someone finds some legal shenanigans to punish them with.

Easy. Invent a car that runs on water. That's only $8 per gallon. (pricing calculated at $1 per pint).

[finboy]

Originally Posted by OreoCookie

Welcome to the unpleasant side of capitalism.

Right, we should nationalize the oil industry. That would fix it. Plus, we'd be helping the bicycle industry, and we're ALL going to be needing that soon anyway. Just like the North Koreans!

[dcmacdaddy]

Originally Posted by wallinbl

http://money.cnn.com/2005/10/27/news...ex.htm?cnn=yes

They set a record for the highest profit in any quarter in US history. Prices for gas run through the roof supposedly because of the hurricanes and Exxon uses the opportunity to bend everyone over and rake in more money. Screw them. I hope someone finds some legal shenanigans to punish them with.

If you don't like Exxon's obscene profits, then don't help contribute to them.

Drive a smaller car, drive it less overall, buy your gas from a dealer other than Exxon, and tell everyone you know to get their gas from a dealer other than Exxon. If enough people did this then their profits would start to slip. But then some other giant oil conglomerate would be making the record-setting profits.


Like someone else said already: Welcome to Capitalism.

[Doofy]

Originally Posted by dcmacdaddy

If you don't like Exxon's obscene profits, then don't help contribute to them.

Drive a smaller car, drive it less overall, buy your gas from a dealer other than Exxon, and tell everyone you know to get their gas from a dealer other than Exxon. If enough people did this then their profits would start to slip.

Ooops. Your tie-dye t-shirt is showing. If you're not buying from Exxon anyway, then the size of your car or the amount you drive it isn't going to have an effect on their profits, is it?

[Artful Dodger]

try canola. it's cheap these days.

[ambush]

Originally Posted by MacNStein

Fine, don't buy gas at Exxon. I don't. I buy gas from a smaller local company and I always pay less, sometimes much less.

But sometimes you don't have the choice.

Yay for capitalism, yay for gas guzzlers!

[OreoCookie]

Originally Posted by finboy

Right, we should nationalize the oil industry. That would fix it. Plus, we'd be helping the bicycle industry, and we're ALL going to be needing that soon anyway. Just like the North Koreans!

Excuse me?
I'm a staunch opponent of Communism, as I've lived in a post-Communist country for three years.

But capitalism has down-sides and complaining about them when they become obvious is nonsensical. Either you do it or you don't. Capitalism has more advantages than disadvantages, but if you make a choice, you also have to live with the disadvantages

[tie]

Good for Exxon! It is always good to see American companies doing well in this tough economy.

[JoshuaZ]

Ethonal? Help out those poor farmers who live off government subsities! Think of the children.

[Kevin]

Originally Posted by allblue

At the risk of getting my ass burned - with respect this forum doesn't appear to have a very sophisticated understanding .....

[dcmacdaddy]

Originally Posted by Doofy

Ooops. Your tie-dye t-shirt is showing. If you're not buying from Exxon anyway, then the size of your car or the amount you drive it isn't going to have an effect on their profits, is it?

Actually my t-shirt is light green and it is celebrating the Girl Scouts.
So, let me re-phrase my statement by saying the following.

IF one is going to buy gas from Exxon then one should drive a smaller car and drive it less; That way they get less of your money.

OR

IF one is not going to buy gas at all from Exxon then don't do anything else, just stop patronizing their gas stations.

Sorry I confused my arguments, Sherwin. I won't let it happen again.

[wallinbl]

Call me anticapitalist if you want, but Denny Hastert appears to agree that it's worth looking at:
http://www.speaker.gov/journal/051027_firstblog.shtml


In Florida, the Attorney General will smack you stupid for using a hurricane to raise prices. Gas stations and hotels try it every time.

[placebo1969]

What was the ratio of revenue to profit? I wonder what it's like compared to a company like Apple or even Microsoft?

[tie]

Originally Posted by wallinbl

Call me anticapitalist if you want, but Denny Hastert appears to agree that it's worth looking at:
http://www.speaker.gov/journal/051027_firstblog.shtml

Funny, just a few weeks ago, Hastert was running in circles trying to pass subsidies for the oil industry.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,171593,00.html

Refinery Bill Passes Amid Partisan Split
Friday, October 07, 2005

WASHINGTON — The House narrowly approved a Republican-crafted energy bill Friday aimed at encouraging construction of new refineries, although opponents said it would do nothing to ease energy prices while handing unneeded benefits to a profit-rich oil industry.
...
The vote, which was supposed to be taken in five minutes, lasted more than 40 minutes as GOP leaders searched for the last two votes they needed to get the bill approved. They buttonholed lawmakers for last-minute lobbying as Democrats complained loudly that the vote should be closed. Finally two GOP lawmakers switched from "no" to "yes," giving the bill's supporters the margin of victory.

During the fight, some Democrats who had supported the legislation also switched their votes to "no." In the end, no Democrats voted for the legislation.

Exxon owns the Republican leadership; they won't do anything.

[Kevin]

Did Exxon OWN the Democrats in the 90s and early 2000 when they didn't do anything either? (You know, when the gas hike, and the predicting of such hike started) (Not that I am blaming them.. that would be silly)

[MacNStein]

Originally Posted by ambush

But sometimes you don't have the choice.

Yay for capitalism, yay for gas guzzlers!

I always have a choice.

[IceBreaker]

Originally Posted by wallinbl

http://money.cnn.com/2005/10/27/news...ex.htm?cnn=yes

They set a record for the highest profit in any quarter in US history. Prices for gas run through the roof supposedly because of the hurricanes and Exxon uses the opportunity to bend everyone over and rake in more money. Screw them. I hope someone finds some legal shenanigans to punish them with.

oh boo hoo.

[wallinbl]

Originally Posted by IceBreaker

if you are upset they are making a profit.... build your own oil company/refinary and go into competition with them...and get rich!

THAT my friend is the American way.

Fixed. Sorry, but the American way has nothing to do with lowering prices.

[wallinbl]

Originally Posted by IceBreaker

if you are upset they are making a profit

I'm not upset that they are making a profit. What bothers me is that they used the hurricanes as a screen to raise prices. No one will complain about it if it was caused by the hurricanes, because hurricanes are a force of nature and can't be controlled. People even have a bit of sympathy that refineries were shut down or damaged. So, they saw an opportunity to use a major disaster to get people to pay more money for their product. It was a shitty thing to do.

[screamingFit]

Originally Posted by Kevin

Did Exxon OWN the Democrats in the 90s and early 2000 when they didn't do anything either? (You know, when the gas hike, and the predicting of such hike started) (Not that I am blaming them.. that would be silly)

Actually, deregulation (overturning much of the work FDR had established) of energy companies started in 1992 by Bush Sr. which is what paved the way to these companies having record setting profits. The Clinton (he was a major energy company President before he was president, btw) Years also helped further the deregulation. Bush Jr. is just being less slick (I mean, who doesn't know he's in bed with them?) about how much personal interest law-makers have in energy companies making money.

These companies make these profits because they CAN and because Washington has allowed it.

[Doofy]

Originally Posted by screamingFit

Actually, deregulation (overturning much of the work FDR had established) of energy companies started in 1992 by Bush Sr. which is what paved the way to these companies having record setting profits. The Clinton (he was a major energy company President before he was president, btw) Years also helped further the deregulation. Bush Jr. is just being less slick (I mean, who doesn't know he's in bed with them?) about how much personal interest law-makers have in energy companies making money.

These companies make these profits because they CAN and because Washington has allowed it.

Hey, Americans! There are land masses east of Maine...

BP posts record profits. Is that anything to do with Katrina or with Washington "allowing it"?

[wallinbl]

Originally Posted by Doofy

Hey, Americans! There are land masses east of Maine...

Hey, world! We're America and we don't care about you! (Sadly, this is true)

Originally Posted by Doofy

BP posts record profits. Is that anything to do with Katrina or with Washington "allowing it"?

They were selling gas at ridiculous prices in the US alongside all the other companies.

[Doofy]

Originally Posted by wallinbl

They were selling gas at ridiculous prices in the US alongside all the other companies.

Yes, ridiculously cheap prices. Ours is $6 per US gallon.

[screamingFit]

Originally Posted by Doofy

Hey, Americans! There are land masses east of Maine...

BP posts record profits. Is that anything to do with Katrina or with Washington "allowing it"?

I was going to leave that up to you Brits to complain about how you were raped by Thatcher years ago when she setup deregulation of your energy supply.

[Doofy]

Originally Posted by screamingFit

I was going to leave that up to you Brits to complain about how you were raped by Thatcher years ago when she setup deregulation of your energy supply.

Funny that. 70% of our retail fuel price goes straight into the hands of the current socialist a-hole government, not Thatcher's government.

[SVass]

When the price of oil goes up, the value of the Exxon inventory goes up. This increase is booked as profit. When (and if) the value goes down and the decrease is booked as a loss. Both are phantom and commenters love to argue about them as this thread demonstrates.

Phony bookkeeping is a prerogative of capitalism and demagoguery. sam

[olePigeon]

I think it's funny how gas prices go up in anticipation of a crisis. Then they take several months to go back down after the crisis; and always not as much as it went up.

Personally, I want gas to go up to $10/gallon. It'd force people to look to alternatives.

[Kevin Moon]

To those that say just don't buy gas from exxon that is hard not to do. All the retail outlets have agreements with the oil companies. So if you go to a shell station you are getting your gas from exxon. Basically the retail segement of the oil sector buys from whoever is offering the best price. You can't pick and choose what company you buy gas from based on the sign that's out front.

[tie]

Originally Posted by Kevin

Did Exxon OWN the Democrats in the 90s and early 2000 when they didn't do anything either? (You know, when the gas hike, and the predicting of such hike started) (Not that I am blaming them.. that would be silly)

Possibly (although weren't the Republicans in control of Congress then too?). But still, not a single Democrat voted for this latest oil industry subsidy. Good.

Look, I don't have a problem with Exxon posting record profits for an American company. (My earlier post in this thread was not being sarcastic.) That's capitalism. I do not think the Republicans should do anything like imposing punitive taxes any more than the Democrats should have.

What I do have a problem with is Hastert and the other Republicans sneaking through a big subsidy for oil companies just three weeks before these companies post record profits (and then insincerely scolding them). That's crony capitalism (AKA Russian-style capitalism), and it's disgusting.

[OreoCookie]

Originally Posted by tie

Possibly (although weren't the Republicans in control of Congress then too?). But still, not a single Democrat voted for this latest oil industry subsidy. Good.

Look, I don't have a problem with Exxon posting record profits for an American company. (My earlier post in this thread was not being sarcastic.) That's capitalism. I do not think the Republicans should do anything like imposing punitive taxes any more than the Democrats should have.

What I do have a problem with is Hastert and the other Republicans sneaking through a big subsidy for oil companies just three weeks before these companies post record profits (and then insincerely scolding them). That's crony capitalism (AKA Russian-style capitalism), and it's disgusting.

These companies neither need subsidies right now nor lowered environmental standards to build refineries. They have the money.

[screamingFit]

Originally Posted by olePigeon

Personally, I want gas to go up to $10/gallon. It'd force people to look to alternatives.

I couldn't agree more. Perhaps strong public transportation infrastructures could be put back into place in the US. Hopefully, they wouldn't be bought out and destroyed again as they were by the auto industry.

[screamingFit]

Originally Posted by Doofy

Funny that. 70% of our retail fuel price goes straight into the hands of the current socialist a-hole government, not Thatcher's government.

Whether or not 70% of your fuel price goes into the goverment coffers, you are paying more because of the deregulation Thatcher and her cronies introduced.

[screamingFit]

DP.

Love that forum server!

[nath]

Originally Posted by screamingFit

Whether or not 70% of your fuel price goes into the goverment coffers, you are paying more because of the deregulation Thatcher and her cronies introduced.

And of course, the fuel tax 'escalator', also introduced by the Tory government.

The major change in petrol taxation came under the Conservatives in 1993 with the introduction of the Fuel Price Escalator.

The escalator was designed as a means both to raise money and discourage car use on environmental grounds.

At the time, British fuel was the third-cheapest in Europe. It is now the most expensive.

The annual fuel escalator was set in 1993 at 3% above the rate of inflation.

On its introduction it added three pence to a litre of fuel and raised the tax burden on unleaded petrol to 72.8% of the total cost.

When the Conservatives left office in 1997, the escalator was at 5% and had contributed a 11.1 pence rise to the cost of unleaded fuel. Tax as a proportion of total cost stood at 76.3%.

Link

[Doofy]

Originally Posted by nath

And of course, the fuel tax 'escalator', also introduced by the Tory government.

And not removed in the eight years during which Labour have been in power.